Corruption Stains Timber Trade – Peter S. Goodman and Peter Finn

From the Washington Post, a report on corruption in the logging industry which is allowing Chinese firms to deforest land from Siberia to Papua New Guinea to the Amazon, in order to make furniture and other goods for American and European consumers:

Some of the largest swaths of natural forest left on the planet are being dismantled at an alarming pace to feed a global wood-processing industry centered in coastal China.

Mountains of logs, many of them harvested in excess of legal limits aimed at preserving forests, are streaming toward Chinese factories where workers churn out such products as furniture and floorboards. These wares are shipped from China to major retailers such as Ikea, Home Depot, Lowe’s and many others. They land in homes and offices in the United States and Europe, bought by shoppers with little inkling of the wood’s origins or the environmental costs of chopping it down. [Full text]